EVENTS

“Don’t treat us like we treat gays!”

Usually I leave the World Net Daily beat to Ed, but this came up in my Google alerts, and I couldn’t resist.

The European Court of Human Rights is set to deliver a key verdict early next week in a major case against the United Kingdom surrounding anti-Christian discrimination.

I’m not sure exactly how the UK managed to “surround” this alleged anti-Christian discrimination, but the four cases concern two women who were wearing crosses in violation of company policies prohibiting jewelry, plus a counselor who refused to provide sex therapy to gays, plus a borough clerk who refused to officiate at gay marriages. I’m not sure what the specific legal merits are in each case, though the reason this lawsuit is coming up in the ECHR is because the Christians have failed to win their lawsuits anywhere else. Then again, look who’s representing them.

“These cases are of a primary importance because they raise the matter of the toleration of Christians by the Western postmodern society,” explained director Grégor Puppinck with the European Center for Law and Justice, which filed a brief in the case supporting the plaintiffs.

The European Center for Law Injustice (excuse me, “and Justice”)? That would be the expatriate branch of the American Center for Law Injustice (darn, did it again), would it not?

The WND doesn’t waste too much time relating the relevant details, and goes straight to the Christian martyrdom pose.

“They are an example of the marginalization of believers in the current liberal societies,” he told WND. “If it is not stopped by human rights, the radical secularist ideology can potentially submit the Christians in Europe to the same oppression that they suffer in the Communist and the Islamic countries.”

Translation: if we don’t stop this, we may soon find Christians being treated the way Christians try to treat gays (this exact lawsuit being a specific example). Plus, isn’t it getting harder to use Communist and Islamic regimes as evil boogeymen, when Communist countries like Russia are seeing a resurgence of Christian influence (just ask Pussy Riot), and when Islamic countries have always had the same anti-gay prejudices and policies as the Christians are trying to promote? If irony were a power source, we wouldn’t need fossil fuels.

Well, there’s tons of fun here for the dedicated ferrophile, but I just want to quickly highlight this remark, which is really the cream of the crop here.

However, the issues at stake are even broader than that, Puppinck explained.

“While Christian values were the source and the paradigm of human rights, they are now at risk of being replaced by this ideology as new underlying values of human rights, and of being turned into nothing but mere subjective, individual practices, without any social legitimacy or rational claim,” he warned.

The consequences could be disastrous.

True—but only for mere subjective, individual practices, without any social legitimacy or rational claim. And frankly, we’re better off without them.

While I don’t think you’re advocating for treating christians like they treat LBGT’s, the point is that we want to build a society where no one is treated poorly.

The problem is that christian leaders are upset that they will no longer be able to discriminate in the public square. This robs the claims they can still make in their churches of any chance of being seen as legitimate.

I think Puppinck has it backward. Christian doctrines are being replaced by secular values because more and more UK citizens already see that religion is a subjective, individual practice, and a rather antiquated and tedious one at that.

While Christian values were the source and the paradigm of human rights,…

What?! The notion of human rights comes from people getting pissed off at being oppressed by established authority. It has nothing to do with Christianity except in those cases in which the oppressing established authority is a church.

“being turned into nothing but mere subjective, individual practices, without any social legitimacy or rational claim,” he warned.

The horror that religious practice might be a matter of private conscience rather than the foundation of public policy. That’s what most religious minorities get anyway, so what’s the big deal? Secularism is the only way to treat religions fairly.